Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History – Book Review
‘Palestine – A Four Thousand Year History’ by Nur Masalha. (Book Cover)
Review by Jim Miles | Palestine Chronicle | February 4, 2019
The Israeli narrative of a nation/state returning to its homeland after a fifteen hundred year exile required deft work by the David Ben-Gurion initiated Governmental Names Committee (Va’adat Hashemot Hamimshaltit, 1949). The Hebraization of Palestine is described in Nur Masalha’s “Palestine – A Four Thousand Year History” a strong scholarly academic addition to the subject of delegitimization of an indigenous people.
The first part of the book covers the era from the Bronze Age – roughly 2,500 years ago – to the mid-Ottoman era and the autonomous governance of al-’Umar and Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar. It concentrates its analysis mostly on the name Palestine and its historical precedents in other languages from ancient maps and historical writings. It does provide a few glimpses into the kind of society represented by the name but is mostly concerned with the philology of the name itself.
As the work reaches the Ottoman empire, many more sources are used for reference and provide a much stronger perspective on the lifestyles of the indigenous Palestinian people and a split between the urban elites and the majority living in smaller villages and working the land. In the late Ottoman empire, the early years of Christian Zionism/Orientalism/Biblicism, and in the early years of European based secular nationalist Zionism, more diverse sources are used to emphasize the denial of the indigenous Palestinians through language usage.
Masalha’s theme is simple: to demonstrate the existence of Palestine through the centuries by studying the language used, its reference in historical works, and how the modern Hebraization brought on by the western Christian Biblical traditions combined with the Zionist enterprise attempts to deny the existence of Palestine and its people. From that thesis he succeeds remarkably well, providing strong references of the use of the word Palestine up to and including Israeli usage after the 1948 Nakba. But well before that, the Orientalist Christian perspective had already begun the assault on Arabic/Palestinian historical geographic names previously supported by earlier works.
As the study continues into the modern era, many devices are used to erase and cover over any sign of Palestinian geographic inheritance. Much of the initial changes in western knowledge were brought about by various biblical study groups searching for archeological evidence for their story. When not finding much of that evidence, biblical names were simply appropriated and used for different regions, down to specific geographic features. This latter methodology was continued by the early Jewish settlers and strongly reinforced after the creation of Israel.
Appropriation of Arabic names occurred through the process of alliteration, finding – or even inventing – a Hebraic word resembling the Arabic word. A similar process was used for personal names of the Jewish European settlers by choosing a Hebrew word or as frequently an appropriated Arabic word to create a new patronymic.
One of the strongest methods is simply erasure. This occurred before, during and after the Nakba as many villages were physically destroyed, many others expropriated, and most being renamed using some form of Biblical/Hebraic names. Erasure continues both geographically and culturally ranging from street signs to educational texts and instructions.
From the general trend of Masalha’s presentation, modern Hebrew is a contrived language, based on a confined liturgical element incorporating by necessity many modern terms, many Arabic/Palestinian terms, and many biblical terms rendered into a semblance of an ancient Hebraic language. It also clearly demonstrates a history of a region called Palestine at the geographical crossroads of ancient and modern history, surviving under various rulers, some with more autonomy than others, but distinctly Palestinian.
Further, while not denying the existence of an Israeli entity, it is seen as an ongoing part of many different peoples and cultures that inhabited the area at one time or another. The Israeli myth of a sudden influx of Arabs during the Muslim conquests is compared to the historical record of a gradual introduction of Arabic ideas and peoples into the region before the conquest. Of note as well are the frequent references to the peaceful mixing and coexistence of the three major religions in the more modern landscape before the advent of the Orientalist Christian Zionism began to usurp the region.
Unfortunately for all that, “Palestine – A Four Thousand Year History” has a problem that does not deny its academic argument. The work for the purpose of spreading this information to the general public is far too scholarly and academic, something I can work through because of my background reading and my intentions as a reviewer, but would prove very difficult to attract attention to a general reader.
The first section in particular, while referencing many maps using the word Palestine or its linguistic equivalents, does not provide any visuals – no maps. A reference section with some plates showing the range of maps from ancient histories through to the British maps of Mandatory Palestine would be a valuable addition to the work.
Having said that, I must reiterate that his arguments support the main thesis very well. The latter half of the book both instructs this thesis and at the same time provides a more reader-friendly discussion of not only the geography but the essence of the people of Palestine.
(Palestine – A Four Thousand Year History. Nur Masalha. Zec Books, London, 2018.)
– Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews to Palestine Chronicles. His interest in this topic stems originally from an environmental perspective, which encompasses the militarization and economic subjugation of the global community and its commodification by corporate governance and by the American government.
Death Knell For Syria Pullout: “We Have To Protect Israel” Says Trump
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 02/03/2019
After approaching two months of talk of a “full” and “immediate” US troop withdrawal from Syria, first ordered by President Trump on December 19 — which was predictably met with swift and fierce pushback from beltway hawks including in some cases his own advisers — it now appears the death knell has sounded on the prior “complete” and “rapid” draw down order.
Trump said in a CBS “Face the Nation” interview this weekend that some unspecified number of US troops will remain in the region, mostly in Iraq, with possibly some still in Syria, in order “to protect Israel” in what appears a significant backtrack from his prior insistence on an absolute withdrawal.
“We’re going to be there and we’re going to be staying. We have to protect Israel,” he replied when pressed by CBS reporter Margaret Brennan. “We have to protect other things that we have. But we’re – yeah, they’ll be coming back in a matter of time.” He did note that “ultimately some will be coming home.”
“Look, we’re protecting the world,” he added. “We’re spending more money than anybody’s ever spent in history, by a lot.” Trump’s slow drift and change in tune on the subject of a promised “rapid” exit comes after Israeli officials led by Prime Minister Netanyahu alongside neocon allies in Washington argued that some 200 US troops in Syria’s southeast desert along the Iraqi border and its 55-kilometer “deconfliction zone” at al-Tanf are the last line of defense against Iranian expansion in Syria, and therefore must stay indefinitely.
“I want to be able to watch Iran,” Trump said further during the CBS interview. “Iran is a real problem.” He explained that “99%” of ISIS’s territory had been liberated but that a contingency of US troops must remain to prevent a resurgent Islamic State as well as to counter Iranian influence, for which American forces must remain in Iraq as well.
“When I took over, Syria was infested with ISIS. It was all over the place. And now you have very little ISIS, and you have the caliphate almost knocked out,” the president said. “We will be announcing in the not too distant future 100% of the caliphate, which is the area – the land – the area – 100. We’re at 99% right now. We’ll be at 100.”
However Trump’s invoking Iranian influence as a rationale for staying further contradicts his prior December statement that the defeat of ISIS was “the only reason” he was in Syria in the first place.
MARGARET BRENNAN: How many troops are still in Syria? When are they coming home?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: 2,000 troops.
MARGARET BRENNAN: When are they coming home?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They’re starting to, as we gain the remainder, the final remainder of the caliphate of the area, they’ll be going to our base in Iraq, and ultimately some will be coming home. But we’re going to be there and we’re going to be staying—
MARGARET BRENNAN: So that’s a matter of months?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have to protect Israel. We have to protect other things that we have. But we’re- yeah, they’ll be coming back in a matter of time. Look, we’re protecting the world. We’re spending more money than anybody’s ever spent in history, by a lot. We spent, over the last five years, close to 50 billion dollars a year in Afghanistan. That’s more than most countries spend for everything including education, medical, and everything else, other than a few countries. — CBS “Face the Nation” Feb.3 interview transcript
The Pentagon in recent weeks has reportedly been putting logistics in place for a troop draw down from northern and eastern Syria.
Though it remains unclear just how many troops could remain as the majority possibly begin to pullout toward US bases in Iraq, the Tanf base could remain Washington’s last remote outpost disrupting what US defense officials see as a strategic Baghdad-Damascus corridor and highway, and potential key “link” in the Tehran-to-Beirut so-called Shia land bridge.
Foreign Policy magazine has identified this argument as the final card the hawks opposing Trump’s draw down had to play in order to hinder to an actual complete US exit:
“Al-Tanf is a critical element in the effort to prevent Iran from establishing a ground line of communications from Iran through Iraq through Syria to southern Lebanon in support of Lebanese Hezbollah,” an unnamed senior US military source told the magazine.
The Israeli prime minister has pushed hard against the White House pullout plan, and “has repeatedly urged the U.S. to keep troops at Al-Tanf, according to several senior Israeli officials, who also asked not to be identified discussing private talks,” per Bloomberg. The Israelis have reportedly argued “the mere presence of American troops will act as a deterrent to Iran” even if in small numbers as a kind of symbolic threat.
The internal administration debate, following incredible push back against Trump’s withdrawal decision, has made entirely visible the national security deep state’s attempt to check the Commander-in-Chief’s power. And now US presence at al-Tanf represents the last hope of salvaging the hawks’ desire for permanent proxy war against Iran inside Syria.
It appears the deep state has won out over Trump’s initial policy decision once again; but it remains to be seen if, however slowly on what’s clearly a delayed timetable departing from his original plans, all US troops ultimately exit Syria. Until then there’ll be more time and perhaps more provocations the hawks can rely on to effectively ensure full circle return to indefinite occupation in Syria.
Spain company rejects Israel tender for Jerusalem railway
MEMO – February 2, 2019
A Spanish company announced yesterday that it had rejected an Israeli tender to build part of the Jerusalem railway, which will cut deep into occupied territory.
Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF or Construction and Other Railway Services) announced that it “refuses to build a section of the railway in Jerusalem because [it] included Palestinian land that will be confiscated, in violation of the resolutions of international legitimacy,” Al-Wattan Voice reported.
The company’s workers also rejected its participation in the project on the same grounds. Representatives of the workers said that the problem lies in the fact that the railway will pass through Palestinian lands to serve illegal settlements in East Jerusalem.
“Any project in any city around the world, especially Jerusalem, must respect human rights and international legitimacy in its implementation,” CAF stressed.
CAF added: “The General Assembly of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice [ICJ], through various resolutions, have said that they are against the occupation of land through which will pass the section of the railway.”
Read also:
Jerusalem Archbishop: ‘Everything Palestinian is targeted by Israel’s occupation’
Archbishop of Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox Church, Atallah Hanna, seen during a protest in the West bank city of Hebron, January 22, 2015 [Muhesen Amren / ApaImages]
MEMO | February 2, 2019
The Palestinian Archbishop of Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox Church, Atallah Hanna, said yesterday that “everything Palestinian in Jerusalem is targeted by the Israeli occupation”.
During a meeting with a delegation from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders, MSF), Hanna explained the dangers threatening Palestinians’ existence and identity in the Holy City, Al-Wattan Voice reported.
“Everything is in danger in Jerusalem,” Hanna said, adding: “The Islamic and Christian holy sites and endowments are targeted in order to change our city, hide its identity and marginalize our Arabic and Palestinian existence.”
Hanna added that “recently, the Israeli occupation cancelled a planned celebration on the 50th anniversary of establishing Al-Maqased Hospital,” noting that the Israeli occupation had cancelled many other Palestinian events planned to take place in Jerusalem.
The Archbishop said that Palestinians “are living under severe torture and harsh persecution,” pointing to Israel’s closure of Palestinian institutions in the city. “It seems that they wanted us to give up Jerusalem and submit to their polices, measures and practices,” he added.
Hanna continued: “Jerusalem is for us and will remain for us. We will never give up our rights in Jerusalem and we will defend it against Israeli oppression.”
Addressing the MSF staff, he said: “We want you to know closely the suffering of the Palestinians and the oppression inflicted by the Israeli occupation on them in Jerusalem. We want our message to reach all the people around the world as we want more friends for the Palestinians.”
Read also:
Israeli forces detain secretary of Fatah in Jerusalem
14 Palestinians homeless as Israel forces 2 Jerusalem homes to be torn down
WHO: Injured Journalist Prevented from Receiving Healthcare
IMEMC News & Agencies – January 31, 2019
The World Health Organisation issued its monthly report entitled “Health Access Barriers for Patients in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, in which the organisation highlighted the case of ALRAY Media Agency’s photographer, Attia Darwish, who was seriously injured a month ago.
WHO said, in its report, which comes in three parts, that a tear gas canister hit Darwish, a 31-year-old photojournalist, in his face, under his left eye, when he was covering demonstrations near the Gaza fence.
“I was taking photos when my phone rang, and I tried to take the call. Suddenly, I felt a blow to my face and fell down,” Attia said, according to Al Ray.
The ambulance picked him up within minutes and took him to a trauma stabilization point close to the fence. After initial assessment and first aid, Attia was rushed to Shifa hospital, in Gaza, for treatment. He had multiple facial fractures and severe bleeding at the back of his eye, putting his sight at risk, the report said.
WHO said that Darwish had surgery to remove shrapnel from the wound, fix his lower jaw and replace fragmented bones in his face with metal plates. He also received initial treatment for his eye injury, but needed review and specialist care outside of Gaza.
“As a photographer, I depend on my eyes to do my job. Now, I can hardly see with my left eye. Getting proper treatment is something critical for me,” Attia said. He subsequently received a medical referral, from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, to go for an appointment to St John’s Eye Hospital, in Jerusalem.
He applied to Israeli authorities for a permit to exit Gaza, for treatment, but, when the date of his hospital appointment came, his permit application was still under review. Attia despaired of getting a permit to exit Gaza, via Erez crossing with Israel, and asked the Services Purchasing Unit in the Ministry of Health to refer him, instead, for treatment in Egypt, WHO recounted.
On the day of his travel, however, Rafah crossing point to Egypt was closed for exit. “I cannot feel the left side of my face. I can only eat soft food and I’m suffering with the pain. The cold weather makes it even worse. When I was in hospital, one of the doctors said I either need a bone graft or an artificial implant. But, neither of those is available in Gaza,” he said, according to the report.
WHO said that when they spoke with Attia, he still had not received his permit to leave Gaza to Jerusalem, stressing that “his case is not an exception.”
The orgnisation pointed out that of 435 permit applications to Israeli authorities by those injured during the Great March of Return demonstrations, only 19% have been approved, where those unable to access the health care they need face a higher risk of complications and poorer health outcomes.
Hamas won’t be part of any new puppet Palestinian government: Official
Deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, Mousa Abu Marzouk
Press TV – January 31, 2019
The deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, Mousa Abu Marzouk, says the resistance movement will not take part in any puppet Palestinian government in Ramallah, noting such a government will be “devoid of any national legacy and would strive to promote division” just like its predecessors.
Marzouk, in a post published on his official Twitter page on Wednesday, said officials from the Ramallah-based Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) would not invite Hamas to participate in such a Palestinian government in the first place, emphasizing that the movement would turn down such an offer even if it were made.
He asserted that a new government in Ramallah would work on realizing US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century.”
The so-called deal, a back channel plan to allegedly reach a peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, was proposed by the US administration in September 2018. Although the plan has not been released, leaks signal it will consist of the same tried and failed ideas.
While little is known about the controversial deal, leaks have suggested that it regards East Jerusalem al-Quds as Israeli territory, whereas Palestinians view the eastern sector of the occupied city as the capital of their future state.
Palestinians also believe that the US-drafted plan calls for keeping borders and security under Israeli control, while it keeps Israeli settlements’ final borders to be discussed in later negotiations.
Palestinian Prime Minister Rami al-Hamdallah officially submitted his resignation and that of his unity government to President Mahmoud Abbas on January 29, casting doubt on the prospects of reconciliation efforts with Hamas.
Abbas had been facing pressure from his ruling Fatah movement over the past few weeks to remove Hamdallah from power, and establish a new government comprised of representatives from PLO factions in addition to independent figures.
Hamdallah headed the Palestinian National Consensus Government, which was formed after Fatah and Hamas reached an agreement in 2014.
Fatah leaders said there was no point in keeping the government in power in the wake of the continued crisis between their faction and Hamas.
They also argue that since their faction is the largest group in the PLO, it should have a strong presence in any government.
Syria Briefing from Peter Ford: US Withdrawal, Safe Zones, Sanctions, Idlib, ISIS & Israel
The following situational briefing update of January 24, 2019 has been provided by Peter Ford, Former British Ambassador to Syria:
US Withdrawal
Contrary to the expectations of many experts, President Trump has remained insistent on the withdrawal of approximately 2,000 US troops from North East Syria, although he has had to concede more time. The ‘conditioned’ withdrawal touted by his uber-hawkish National Security Adviser, John Bolton, appears to have shrunk just to ensuring that the Kurds in the YPG militia the US will be leaving behind are not slaughtered by the Turks. One of the other conditions, eradicating the final remnants of ISIS, appears to have been all but met by a final Coalition push, with ISIS down now to its last village, obviating the handing of the job to Turkey which was ludicrously proposed initially, while the other condition, ensuring that Iran does not benefit, appears to have been quietly forgotten.
‘Safe zone’
Quite how the Kurdish issue will be settled remains up in the air. Not for much longer, however, if we parse correctly the statements made by Putin and Erdogan after their meeting in Moscow on 23 January.
As is often the case when the great men speak, what they do not say is as important as what they do say. Erdogan did not say, as he had done previously, that Turkey was going to police the proposed ‘safe zone’, 20 miles deep, cleared of the YPG. Rather he said that Turkey and Russia were in agreement on the establishment of such a zone. And the next day his Foreign Minister said that Turkey was open to arrangements being made involving ‘the US, Russia or others’. Putin on his side made clear that these significant ‘others’ were the Syrian government, whom he encouraged to speak to the Kurds. The day before the Putin-Erdogan meeting a Kurdish delegation was in Moscow, following earlier discussions in Damascus.
The eventual outcome, a return of Syrian security forces to the North East, is, in the view of this analyst, nailed on. The only question is when and under which conditions. The Kurds, reckoning on the Turks’ lack of appetite for a contested incursion and US dithering, are attempting to squeeze the last concession out of Damascus in terms of incorporation of the YPG into the Syrian security forces and some measures of local self-government, as well as use of the Kurdish language. Damascus, however, appears to hold the whip hand, conscious that as time goes on Trump will look as powerless over withdrawal as he does over the Mexican Wall if he does not act ‘and will if necessary call the Kurds’ bluff.
ISIS
It does indeed seem curtains for ISIS in Syria, at least as a territory-controlling caliphate. ISIS drew attention to themselves however with a suicide bomb attack in Manbij which left four Americans dead, prompting predictable cries from the foreign policy establishment in the US and Europe that it was folly to be leaving a ‘vacuum’ in Syria while there was still life in the twitching ISIS body. That experts deemed reputed could peddle this superficial analysis and be believed in the media is testimony to the blinkered thinking which dominates in the West. There will be no vacuum – the Syrian government has a good track record in the areas it has liberated of crushing ISIS, better in fact than the Americans for whom, as for their Kurdish allies, there are no-go areas of Arab villages in the areas they nominally control. These experts would do well to reflect on why ISIS are choosing this decisive moment to attack US forces, something they have curiously jailed to do for several months.
The hidden factor here is the incipient next phase in ISIS’s existence. It has gone underground, especially in Deir EzZor province which straddles the Euphrates. This is the equivalent of Iraq’s restless Anbar province which it borders. ISIS will not relish the prospect of Syrian Mukhabarat (security police) descending on Arab villages which have hitherto been no go areas to wake up ‘sleepers’. Expect more attacks on US forces.
Idlib
Putin and Erdogan also discussed Idlib, although the way forward here is less clear. Even the Turks cannot deny that in what is, to all intents and purposes, a Turkish and Western protectorate, the extreme jihadist Al Qaida-linked Tahrir Ash Sham (HTS) has run amok and now controls virtually the entirety of the area. This is the opposite of what was supposed to happen under the terms of the Russo-Turkish Sochi agreement which brought the September crisis to an end. Under Sochi the Turks were supposed to bring HTS to heel. Putin seemed to hint that military preparations would now move ahead for the Syrian government with Russian support to advance on Idlib, with Turkish acquiescence. The seamlines are already hot.
Political negotiations
One thing is clear. The Idlib issue is not going to be resolved by any political negotiations between the warring parties. The Western powers who cling to the comforting fiction that there can only be a political end to the Syrian conflict have no answers where Idlib is concerned.
The new UN envoy for Syria, Gerd Pederson, appears to be feeling his way, slowly, as well he might. Currently the Geneva process is in baulk over US, French and British blocking of a slate of candidates for inclusion in the Constitutional Committee which is supposed to come up eventually with a new constitution which will pave the way for UN-supervised elections with the participation, as the Western powers and Turkey would have it, of millions of Assad-hating refugees.
This mirage might appear harmless. However it is constantly cited by the Western powers to justify their conduct of war on Syria by other means than the military methods which are now all but exhausted.
Sanctions
How have the EU and the US responded to the prospect of normalisation in Syria? With more sanctions of course.
The EU has slapped sanctions on Syrian businessmen participating in a flagship property development scheme in Damascus deemed tantamount to assisting the ‘regime’. This scheme is emblematic of the many private investment projects now popping up, many of them involving Arab investors. Obviously the EU could not tolerate such progress, it not being enough to hamstring economic recovery with the existing deeply harmful battery of sanctions. The stated reason is that the Syrian government is not facilitating political progress towards the above mentioned mirage of elections rigged to produce a government of Western stooges. If the masterminds of EU diplomacy sincerely believe that such sanctions will make Assad bow the knee after eight years of vicious conflict have failed to do so, then we must fear for their sanity.
The US House of Representatives, with White House support, has chimed in with a Syria sanctions bill aimed at punishing any person or business which participates in any government linked project. This could have extra-territorial effect, dampening the interest of outside investors in Syria recovery projects. Again this highlights the hypocrisy of Western legislators who profess humanitarian concern but who are careless of inflicting economic suffering on a population already on its uppers after eight years of conflict, fuelled by Western support for armed groups, as long as they can strike a virtue-signalling blow against the ‘regime’. This is what a diplomacy of vindictiveness looks like.
The practitioners of this diplomacy have had some success with US and UK diplomats scouring Arab countries to pressure them into delaying normalisation of relations with Syria until the mirage has been reached. It appears that a consensus on Syria’s readmission to the Arab League as early as March is not likely to be found. Damascus will shrug this off. It is only delaying the inevitable. Arab countries who feel threatened by both Iran and fundamentalism can see that they are going to have to learn to live with Syria and that using contacts with Damascus to dilute Iran’s influence and share intelligence are very much in their interest.
Israel
Perennial party pooper Israel has attempted to spoil Assad’s successes by relaunching after a pause airborne attacks, ostensibly against Iranian targets. This is odd in that even US intelligence, cited by Trump, apparently more attentive to intelligence briefings than his detractors would have you believe, has reported that Iran has been withdrawing forces. The most recent blatant day time raid elicited a rare reprisal from Damascus, a missile which was shot down over the Syrian occupied Golan (not even Israel itself). Cue massive display of shock by the media, which had signally ignored the literally thousands of Israeli bombs dropped on Syria over the last two years. Naturally Syria and Russia’s attempt to secure some expression of concern from the Security Council failed, unprovoked aggression by Israel apparently not being inconsistent with the ‘rules based system’ constantly enjoined by the West on others.
Israel should however beware of hubris. Syria’s new Russian supplied SAM 300 air defence system is scheduled to become operational in March.
Author Peter Ford is the former British Ambassador to Syria (2003-2006) and Bahrain (1999-2002).
This briefing was originally published at the Global Network for Syria\
International court judge resigns, citing ‘shocking’ interference from ‘above the law’ US
RT | January 30, 2019
A senior judge has resigned from the UN International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, after the United States threatened judges investigating alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.
The judge, Christoph Flügge, has worked with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) since 2008. More recently, he got involved with preliminary investigations into claims that US military service members and CIA operatives tortured prisoners in Afghanistan.
Flügge told German newspaper Zeit that he handed in his resignation after open threats from US officials, including a speech by hawkish national security adviser John Bolton last September, where Bolton “wished death” on the Court.
“If these judges ever interfere in the domestic concerns of the US or investigate an American citizen, he said the American government would do all it could to ensure that these judges would no longer be allowed to travel to the United States – and that they would perhaps even be criminally prosecuted,” Flügge told Zeit, in an interview translated by The Guardian.
“The American security adviser held his speech at a time when The Hague was planning preliminary investigations into American soldiers who had been accused of torturing people in Afghanistan,” Flügge explained. “The American threats against international judges clearly show the new political climate. It is shocking. I had never heard such a threat.”
Bolton’s speech was delivered in September to the conservative Federalist Society in Washington, DC. It came a year after the ICC began investigating claims that at least 61 detained persons in Afghanistan had been tortured by American troops and another 27 by the CIA at secret prisons in Afghanistan and abroad, according to prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
Bolton called the investigation “utterly unfounded” and “unjustifiable,” and promised to “protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court.”
The senior US official also vowed to defend Israeli citizens from the court. US “friend and ally” Israel was at the time accused of perpetrating war crimes against Palestinian civilians. He warned that the US would disregard arrest warrants, ban judges and prosecutors from entering the country, and even try them in American courts.
Flügge said his colleagues were “stunned” that “the US would roll out such heavy artillery,” but added “it is consistent with the new American line: ‘We are No 1 and we stand above the law’.”
American disregard for the ICC is not a new phenomenon. After much debate, President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Treaty that established the International Criminal Court, but the Congress never ratified it. Clinton’s successor George W. Bush symbolically ‘un-signed’ the treaty in 2002, when the war in Afghanistan was in full swing.
Later that year, the Congress passed the American Service Members’ Protection Act, which obliged the president to prevent any ICC prosecution of US armed forces “to the maximum extent possible,” and even authorized military force to free any US service members from ICC custody. Bolton, incidentally, was Bush’s under-secretary of state at the time.
The court has come under fire from more countries than just the US. Russia withdrew its signature from the Rome Treaty in 2016, after the court criticized the reunification of Crimea. China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are among the other nations that never signed the treaty.
US warns Israel against keeping up strikes on Syria
Press TV – January 30, 2019
The top US intelligence official has warned Israel of the consequences of keeping up its military strikes on Syrian soil, saying the attacks could eventually trigger a response from Iran, which has its military advisors based in the Arab state.
Speaking at a hearing of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in Washington on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said that Israel’s continued aerial assaults against Syria would increase the risk of Iran’s retaliation.
“We assess that Iran seeks to avoid a major armed conflict with Israel,” Coats said. “However, Israeli strikes that result in Iranian casualties increase the likelihood of Iranian conventional retaliation against Israel.”
Coats also raised concerns about “the long-term trajectory of Iranian influence in the region and the risk that conflict will escalate.”
He further claimed that Iran pursues “permanent military bases” in Syria and probably wants to maintain a network of “fighters” there despite the Israeli aerial assaults.
The American official was presenting the views of the US Intelligence Community to the congressional committee as part of the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment.
Tehran has been offering military advisory assistance to the Syrian army at the request of the Damascus government. Iran says it is not operating any military bases there.
The Israeli military has on multiple occasions launched air raids against targets inside Syria, some of which it claims belonged to Iranian forces.
Israel – which has been backing the terror groups operating against Damascus — views Iranian advisors in Syria as a threat and has openly pledged to target them until they leave the Arab country.
Earlier this month, the chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) responded to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “ridiculous” threat of strikes against Iranian advisors.
Major General Ali Jafari vowed that the Islamic Republic will protect its military advisory mission against the regime’s acts of aggression.
Just days ago, Iran’s chief military commander raised the possibility of Iran adopting offensive military tactics to protect its interests.
The chief military commander says Iran is prepared to adopt offensive military tactics in order to protect its interests while generally adhering to its broad defense doctrine.
In April 2018, an Israeli airstrike against the T-4 airbase in Syria’s Homs Province killed more than a dozen people, reportedly including seven Iranian military advisors.
In May of the same year, Israel conducted its most intensive airstrikes on Syria in decades. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, Israel had used 28 warplanes in its Syria strikes and fired 70 missiles. Both Damascus and Moscow said that the Syrian army had managed to shoot down over half of the missiles.
The Tel Aviv regime, at the time, claimed that its assault was in response to a barrage of 20 rockets that had been fired from Syria at Israeli military outposts in the occupied Golan Heights, and it blamed the rocket attack on Iran.
Partition: Bad in Ireland and Palestine, Good in Syria?
By Gavin O’Reilly | American Herald Tribune | January 29, 2019
Ask the question in left-wing circles of what affect partitioning a country along ethno-religious lines at the behest of an imperial power can have and the response will usually be straightforward.
In Ireland, following the 1921 surrender agreement between former revolutionaries and the British government, a six-county statelet was formed in the north-east of the country remaining under British rule and with an inbuilt Unionist majority; the pro-British element descended from English and Scottish colonizers, planted in the region by King James in the 17th century in a bid to displace the native Irish population which had provided so much resistance to British occupation.
The Nationalist population of this British-ruled part of Ireland, those descended from the indigenous Irish and who sought to live in an Ireland free of British rule, suffered systemic discrimination at the hands of this newly-formed British statelet, being denied the same access to housing, education, and employment that was afforded to their Unionist counterparts.
A neo-colonial pro-British state was also formed in the south of Ireland, where secret police and military units intern Irish Republicans through the use of non-jury courts to this day.
In Palestine, following the establishment of the Zionist State in 1948 in line with the UK-authored 1917 Balfour Declaration, more than half a million Palestinians found themselves refugees in their own country overnight; being forced from their homes in order to accommodate Jewish settlers from Europe.
The State of Israel, in a similar vein to the occupied North of Ireland, would also subject its indigenous Arab population to systemic discrimination and would go on to launch several imperialist wars against its Arab neighbors throughout its existence, with the most recent being covert Israeli involvement in the Syrian conflict.
This would all ultimately suggest that partition is a concept that should be universally opposed by anyone claiming to be anti-Imperialist. Right?
Wrong; when it comes to the issue of Syria, many ‘anti-Imperialists’ do a complete U-turn on the position and instead demand that the Arab Republic, along with Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, is divided up to form a US-Israeli backed Kurdish ethnostate.
In July 2012, when the Syrian conflict was its height, units of the Syrian Arab Army withdrew from the predominantly Kurdish Rojava region in the north of the country in order to provide assistance to military units fighting elsewhere in the Arab Republic; besieged at the time by Western-backed terrorists and yet to receive the key support which would later be provided by Iran and Russia.
The withdrawal of the SAA allowed local Kurdish militias to turn Rojava into a de facto autonomous region, with the most prominent of said groups being the People’s Protection Units (YPG), part of the wider Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed anti-government group.
However, whilst US-backed groups elsewhere in the country were supported by the White House with the intention of ousting the government of Bashar al-Assad, the primary reason for Washington’s support of the Kurds was to fulfill the 1982 Tel Aviv-authored Yinon plan.
This document, written by Oded Yinon, a senior advisor to Ariel Sharon, envisaged Israel maintaining hegemonic superiority in the region via the balkanization of neighboring Arab states hostile to Tel Aviv; in Syria, a country long known for its opposition to Zionism, this would entail the creation of a Kurdish state in the north of the country in a bid to undermine the authority of Damascus.
However, despite this US support for Rojava lining up perfectly with the Yinon plan, support for the creation of a Kurdish state within Syria remains widespread amongst Western leftists, with the feminist politics of the YPG endearing itself to Western Anarchists in particular; the lessons of Ireland and Palestine being lost it would ultimately seem.
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Film Review
We refuse to be silenced’: Gaza film producers blast BBC at BAFTAs
Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2026
The producers of the documentary “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” used their BAFTA TV Awards win on Sunday to publicly denounce the BBC for refusing to air the film, accusing the network of censoring coverage of “Israel’s” genocidal assault on Gaza and silencing voices that document the atrocities committed against Palestinian medical workers.
The documentary, originally commissioned by the BBC but never broadcast due to what the network called “concerns about impartiality” towards “Israel,” won in the current affairs category at the BAFTA ceremony in London. The film was eventually aired by Channel 4 and investigates the systematic targeting of medical personnel and healthcare infrastructure in Gaza during the ongoing genocide.
Journalist Ramita Navai delivered a speech while accepting the award, in which she stated that the occupation has killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and deliberately targeted hospitals and medical workers. According to the documentary’s investigation, more than 1,700 Palestinian health workers have been killed, and over 400 have been abducted by Israeli forces.
Citing United Nations language, Navai described “Israel’s” attacks against Gaza’s medical infrastructure and personnel as “medicide.” She concluded her remarks with a defiant message: “We refuse to be silenced and censored.” … continue
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